The same principle may be illustrated from human history exclusively. We who are of European ancestry and largely Anglo-Saxon by inheritance are pleased to write history as the development of our own civilization with its institutions, customs, and laws; and we regard China and Japan, for example, as incidental and contributory to our own continuation in time. Because our heritage is Christian we date all events from the birth of Christ. Yet we gain some wisdom by pausing to reflect how our procedure might impress an enlightened historian from China or Japan. Would he begin with the cradle of European civilization, pass through Greece and Rome, and then from Europe to America, remarking that in 1852 A.D. Commodore Perry opened Japan to the world? Surely he would begin otherwise, and not unlike ourselves would construe the history of the world in a manner relevant to the progress of his own civilization. Europe and America and Christianity would contribute to that development, but would not constitute its essential or distinctively significant factors. The historian is himself an historical fact indicating a selection, a distinction, and an emphasis in the course of time. His history is naturally colored by that fact. Other histories he can write only with an effort at detachment from his own career. He must forget himself if he would understand others; but he must understand himself first, if he is successfully to forget what he is. He must know what history is, recognize its pluralistic character, and try to do it justice. To do justice to the pluralistic character of history is not, however, simply to write other histories than one's own with commendable impartiality. It is also to be keenly alive to the philosophical implications of this pluralism. The most significant of them is doubtless this: since philosophically considered history is a thing not written, but evolved and acted, to no one history can absolute superiority or preference be assigned. Absolutely considered the history of man can not claim preëminence over the history of the stars. He is no more the darling of the universe than is the remotest nebula. It is just as intelligible and just as true to say that man exists as an illustration of stellar evolution as to say that the sun exists to divide light from darkness for the good of man. Absolutely considered the cosmos is impartial to its many histories. But even that is not well said, for it implies that the cosmos might be partial if it chose. We should rather say that there is no considering of history absolutely at all. For history is just the denial of absolute considerations. It is the affirmation of relative considerations, of considerations which are relative to a selected career. There is no other kind of history possible.